Vision
It doesn’t take much to light a candle where you are. You only need awareness of a need. You only have to grow into your own potential to fill that need.
Take a man who has always sought answers to life’s hows and whys, in a world that has proven, in his eyes, painfully unkind in the most inappropriate times. Take a woman wishing for choices as simple as black and white, but has grown weary facing the grey. Take the differences that people always bring into play, at every congregation; challenge them to a purpose greater than their personal attachments, dare them to a congruence in opposition to all that was dark and insipid and hopeless. Take people wanting change. Take people, on their last wind or the first, who believe. That’s how hope, or love, blooms, and often; unplanned, growing into spectacular clarity from mere detail; a firefly in the dark, setting a bonfire with fellowship.
You don’t have to be wealthy to help your fellowman. You just got to have desire to share your time. You don’t have to be a star, or politician, or pastor, to make a difference where you are. You don’t have to be a Filipino in America, or an American in the Philippines, to be able to do something extraordinary for someone else. You only need to take that step beyond self, that very short distance between your own desires to that of your neighbor and offer that reassuring grip, that helping strength.
That’s what we are. That’s what we want to do. We harbor neither great conceit nor monumental hope in wanting to change the world. We are just united in friendship, rooted in Christ, and one in the agreement that time was not too difficult a gift to give, so that, together, we could do little acts of service, little acts of random kindness, that not one of us could do a hundredth as much by our own selves, otherwise.
We are a group of apolitical Filipino-American friends based in Palm Beach County, Florida, who have became convinced that our spiritual journey would be further enhanced by pooling individual intentions and skills into a group-effort focused on rendering service for people other than ourselves. Over the coming days and years, we will seek to collaborate, or coordinate with other individuals and organizations in fund-raising activities for charitable projects in our region and the Philippines. Our long-term focus will be on community endeavors that shall enable those helped to, someday, help others, or continue helping others, in turn.
We are imperfect beings, looking to grow together in friendship, and looking to the only perfect being we mutually respect, for the enlightenment that only His Grace could provide. This thing that we have agreed to do together … it will always be a work in progress, just as we are and just as we will always be. But we are resolved that it will always be a joy; one infinitely more constant than all we’ve ever known, and ever will.
We have no grand plans to change the world. Ours will be the random kindness, the helping hand offered without ulterior motives, the ready smile for the miserable. We will do what we can, when we are able, to help complete the circle that greater men than we have begun long ago – the circle of goodwill.
We are friends, just giving of ourselves back to others. We are friends, devoting some of our time, to a cause that we believe in. We are Friends in Christ. We are Friends for Christ. We are Friends of Santo Nino, lighting our little candle in our corner of the Great Dark.
Above all things, above all motivations, and above our selves, Friends of Santo Nino, Inc. will always be for the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
It doesn’t take much to light a candle where you are. Come join us!